Among real men and man-eaters

This is a fascinating documentary about two of the largest and least accesible mines in the world, Ertsberg and Grasberg in New Guinea, more specifically the Indonesian-controlled western part of the island, here called Irian Jaya. The production has an almost entertaining "colonial" slant, with the White Man (or brave Americans with very distinct cowboy accents working for The Great Mining Company) cast in the role of masculine conquerors of Nature at its most hellish. The Natives of the area turn out to live on Stone Age level, and are rumored to be cannibals (although everyone interviewed claims they are "really quite nice"). Don´t watch this if your alma mater was a left-liberal community college! 

That being said, the engineering feats of the blancos (and the occasional Indonesian) *are* impressive. The mines in question are at an elevation of about 18,000 feet (circa 5,400 meters), being literally situated on top of mountains. The hills in turn are surrounded by dense jungle and swampland. Roads, seaports, pipelines and airstrips? Non-existent (until the mining company needed them and built them). The old mine at Ertsberg used a large aerial tramway to get workers and equipment up the mountain, while the Grasberg mine has an almost crazy road system crawling up the hillside. The enormous trucks used at the mine must be taken apart into smaller pieces and transported up the mountain, to be re-assembled at their end-destination. 

While the Ertsberg mine was depleted long ago, the Grasberg ditto is still operating. It´s the world´s largest gold mine and second largest copper mine. It´s worth is estimated to 40 billion dollars! 

The documentary also mentions a notorious hoax, involving the Canadian exploration company Bre-X, which claimed to have found an even bigger gold deposit in Borneo (also on Indonesian territory). When the fraud was exposed, Filipino geologist Guzman (who had worked for Bre-X) was found dead and the death declared a suicide, but one of the guys interviewed in this documenatary almost jokingly says that Guzman probably got away and is enjoying his money somewhere in the Philippines! 

Things *not* mentioned here, but found on Wikipedia, include the salient facts that the mines have been attacked by a local armed independence movement (yes, our old friends from the OPM), and that several strikes have broken out among the workforce. 

I´m sure leftist environmentalists would love to hate the Grasberg operation, if they even know about it. Unfortunately for the local Young Greens, in order to de-carbonize our modern economies, we need vast amounts of copper. And Grasberg is the second largest copper mine in the world, remember? 

There is no way around this: if you are an idealistic Green who thinks electric cars will save the world, you are just as responsible for Grasberg as the most based cornucopian. You own it now. This is yours. Unless, of course, you want to go back to the Stone Age and live like the Papuan Natives, in a 40,000-year perennial state of tribal war and cannibalism...